I finally got my act together and with the help of our wonderful media & technology teacher (who had to help me with the student email accounts, etc) my reading groups are now blogging...yeah!!! Although, it's only been this week since we started, I am super impressed with the quality and quantity of their responses so far. I also decided to add video responses, read-aloud responses and audio responses in addition to reading responses.

To model the response expectations, I composed an example response in front of them for the Ruby's Wish post. I first began by typing....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair."

I then asked the students if this was a level 4 response...did I give my opinions and justify them. A unanimous NO. So we added on to it.....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair because it's not right to treat boys better than girls."

The students still agreed that this reading response still was not meaty enough because although I have shared one opinion I still have not told any reasons (from the book or my own life) to convince the reader why Ruby's treatment is not right...I have given no justifications yet. So, I kept composing....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair because it's not right to treat boys better than girls. Ruby felt the boys were treated better than girls because they got the decorative, colorful lanterns in the parade and girls got the plain and simple ones and this made Ruby sad because it made her feel that boys were liked better than girls."

I continued to add more to the post in front of them, giving several more opinions and used evidence from the book and my own life to justify my opinions. You can read it the post and comments here. So today, the kids that did have time to finish did a much better job than the first day, when I gave no direction for the comment and response expectation. You can also read in the post that students have an opportunity to compare and contrast if they think boys and girls are treated differently in the United States just because they're a boy or a girl. This assignment satisfies North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Standard 2: Teachers Embrace Diversity in the School Community and in the World.

I'm still a huge Pinterest fan, and if you aren't, you should be?! ;-) Seriously, I don't get the "Request An Invite" thing, I've heard that takes weeks or months....don't bother with that, just send me your email and I'll send you an invite...email me...jjones2@ymail.com.....see you on Pinterest.